More Milestones and Nights in the Woods

Officially past the 1600 mile mark!

    Over the past three days, we've hiked about 40 miles and spent two nights camping.  On Sunday, we celebrated passing the 1600 mile mark.  I'm still blown away when I think about the mileage.  Even though we haven't done it all at once, it makes me smile to see those numbers tick by.  I still have trouble believing we've actually hiked this far.  It's something truly special.  On our first day out, we hiked a little over 14 miles.  It started raining in the late afternoon, and we walked in the drizzle for a couple of hours.  The rain wasn't too heavy, and it cooled things off and filled up the very dry streams, so I was glad to have it.  We camped in the vicinity of a shelter.  A very nice shelter with an expansive view of the mountains.  I was glad that we had taken our sturdier tent and some hot food.  I fell asleep listening to the sound of the rain on the roof of the tent.
        The next day was quite an accomplishment for us.  We hiked a little over 17 miles.  In the world of Nano and Amicus, that's covering a lot of ground.  We climbed Southern Vermont's highest peak and even ventured up into the abandoned fire tower at the summit (one of two fire towers we climbed over this stretch).

Fire Tower view.

    We also passed a very large lake, which I was tempted to take a swim in, but didn't, since we needed to press on.  While filling up our water bottles, a young man who we'd seen on the trail a couple of times over the past day caught up to us, and while small-talking about the difficulty of summiting the mountain behind us, extolled the virtues of "retroblazing" (otherwise known as taking the old/non-official trail *around* the mountain instead of *over* it) and "iron blazing" (walking along railroad tracks).  I learned some new vocabulary, but I remain true to my AT-purist views.  I am bound and determined to pass every single official white blaze between Georgia and Maine.
  

Break by the Lake

    After 17+ miles of hiking, I was very ready to be finished for the day.  We found a great campsite by a river and had Ramen Noodles on a rock in the middle of the water.  This river was the first river I've seen on the whole AT which didn't look right.  It was an odd yellowish brown color.  We didn't drink from it, but it made an excellent backdrop to our camp.

Camp Nano, deluxe version.

   On our third day of this push, we hiked over 8 miles.  Amazingly, we did it in about 4.5 hours.  Amicus said that I was so motivated to get to the rendezvous point that I went into my special, extra-fast "we're almost to the truck" hiking mode.  One special moment of the morning - we saw a bear!  After we'd been hiking for about a mile, we saw it on the right side of the trail.  It was a very small black bear, and it ran away as fast as it could.  But it was a very special sight.  We made good time and got to the rendezvous point in time for a big, tasty burger lunch and a little exploring around the beautiful small towns in the area.  We even got to feed some gigantic trout and pick up some local organic goodies at a farmer's market for dinner.  Hiking 40 miles over three days is not easy for Nano, but it was so much fun to spend a longer stretch of time in the woods and experience more of what the Vermont AT has to offer.

A very happy Nano rendezvousing with her Trail Angel after 40 miles.